A little Pepping

Cappella Gabrieli presents Ernst Pepping in a small afternoon concert. Pepping was one of German sacred music’s most important innovators, together with Hugo Distler and Hans Friedrich Micheelsen. You can also hear organ works by exactly these three composers, played by Anton Doornhein, holder of both bronze and silver Art, sciences et lettres medals for his services to French organ culture.

Pepping and his colleagues used old polyphony principles, but added twentieth-century rhythm and harmony. Pepping applied this approach to a large collection of hymns. These are collected in the Spandauer Chorbuch (1934-1939) - 270 two to six-part arrangements for unaccompanied choir that Pepping began writing when he started at the school of church music in Spandau (Berlin). Cappella Gabrieli will sing a selection.

We can only guess at what Pepping did during those turbulent years: the composer led a very discreet life. He never wrote about his music and few of his letters survive. Whatever he had to say is to be found in his music, and in his theoretical writings that were so valued by his colleagues.